Trump responds to second day of January 6 hearings with 12-page statement where he blasts ‘SHAM’ investigation and cites Dinesh D’Souza and complains ‘MAGA witnesses were interrogated behind closed doors’

• Former President Donald Trump issued a 12-page statement about the January 6 hearings on Monday 
• Earlier Ex-Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani blasted lawmakers on the House January 6 committee as ‘criminals’
• As they presented their second of six hearings, Giuliani appeared on Steve Bannon’s podcast War Room 
• Former Trump advisers Bill Stepien and Jason Miller both testified in previously unseen video that Rudy Giuliani was the first person in the ex-president’s circle to push election fraud claims 
• Trump’s fraud claims came ‘right out of the box on election night,’ testified ex-Attorney General Bill Barr
• Meanwhile lawmakers are making the case that the vast majority of people around Trump knew how the election was going and eventually how it would end – and that they made it clear to their boss
• Monday’s hearing is the second in a series of six where the panel will outline January 6 as Trump’s ‘last stand’ 
• The committee is investigating the Capitol riot as just one part of a wider alleged plot by Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 presidential election and undermine American democracy
• Follow along with DailyMail.com’s live updating coverage of Monday’s January 6 committee hearing 

Two days into the public January 6 committee hearings, former President Donald Trump delivered a 12-page statement accusing Democrats of seeking to distract from the Biden administration’s failings with a ‘kangaroo court.’

Earlier the House committee had played testimony of Trump officials and aides describing how they had told Trump he lost the 2020 election and that there was not enough voter fraud to overturn the result.

He dismissed its efforts on Monday as a ‘sham.’ 

‘The January 6th Unselect Committee is disgracing everything we hold sacred about our Constitution. If they had any real evidence, they’d hold real hearings with equal representation,’ he said in an emailed statement.

‘They don’t, so they use the illegally constituted committee to put on a smoke and mirrors show for the American people, in a pitiful last ditch effort to deceive the American public…again.’

The committee has interviewed more than 1000 witnesses and assembled hundreds of thousands of pages of documents.

The result, its members hope to show, places Trump at the heart of a conspiracy to topple American democracy.

But Trump, in his response, relies on the partisan support of his former adviser Peter Navarro and conservative activist Dinesh D’Souza to repeat his case that the election was stolen.

Its footnotes are riddled with references to ‘2000 Mules,’ D’Souza’s much critcized documentary that claims to show how dropboxes were abused and the election was stolen from Trump.

Former President Donald Trump blasted the January 6 committee with a 12-page statement on Monday evening

‘There was never an indication of interest in what the actual facts were’: Top quotes from the second January 6 hearing

‘The mayor was definitely intoxicated’: Former Trump adviser Jason Miller on Rudy Giuliani 

‘I don’t know that I had a firm view of what he should say’: Ivanka Trump on what her father should say on election night when it was too early to call the result

‘Right out of the box on election night, the president claimed that there was major fraud under way. I mean, this happened, as far as I could tell, before there was actually any potential of looking at evidence’: Former Attorney General Bill Barr 

 ‘Very, very, very, very bleak’: Trump’s former campaign manager Bill Stepien on their chances of winning the 2020 election 

‘I told him that the stuff his people were shoveling out to the public was bulls***’: Barr on election fraud claims

‘There was never an indication of interest in what the actual facts were’: Barr on Trump’s attitude to fraud claims

‘The 2020 election was not close’: Republican campaign lawyer Ben Ginsberg

Yet earlier in the day Trump’s former Attorney General Bill Barr snorted with laughter as he discussed the documentary.

‘My opinion then and my opinion now is that the election was not stolen by fraud.

‘And I haven’t seen anything since the election that changes my mind on that, including the “2000 Mules” movie,’ he said before laughing at the film widely criticized by factcheckers.

Trump used his statement to accuse Democrats of trying to distract from the crises facing the Biden administration.

‘We have a White House in shambles, with Democrats, just this week, declaring that Biden is unfit to run for reelection,’ he said.

‘And what is the Democrat Congress focused on? A Kangaroo court, hoping to distract the American people from the great pain they are experiencing.’

‘Seventeen months after the events of January 6th, Democrats are unable to offer solutions. 

‘They are desperate to change the narrative of a failing nation, without even making mention of the havoc and death caused by the Radical Left just months earlier.’

He also questioned the committees methods. 

‘MAGA witnesses were interrogated behind closed doors and ordered to not record their own testimony,’ he said.

‘Members of my staff, my friends, supporters, volunteers, donors, were subjected to hours upon hours of inquisition oftentimes having nothing to do with January 6 lives were turned upside down for obvious reasons.’

Earlier Trump’s former lawyer Rudy Giuliani raged at the January 6 committee on Monday, claiming lawmakers ‘have no case’ as they were presenting evidence in their second of six hearings.

The event largely focused on Giuliani’s role in pushing Trump’s false claims that the 2020 presidential election was rigged.

‘They have no case,’ the former New York City mayor said on Trump adviser Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast. ‘This is a follow-up to Russian collusion, Ukrainian conversation – the millions of hours they’ve spent trying to find a crime on Donald Trump and can’t do it.’

‘They started this frame about five years ago. It’s the same cast of characters – Bennie Thompson, and shifty [Adam] Schiff, you see [Eric] Swalwell, not on the committee, but in the background.’

He went on to say that the committee’s Vice Chair Liz Cheney was ‘hysterical’ and had ‘gone off the deep end’ – though he appeared to confuse her momentarily with sister Mary Cheney.  

Cheney said during her opening statement that Trump ‘rejected the advice of his campaign experts on election night’ in favor of advice from ‘an apparently inebriated Rudy Giuliani’ who told him to declare victory that night and insist the vote count be stopped ‘to falsely claim everything was fraudulent.’ 

Giuliani denied the assertion that he was drunk through his lawyer – despite multiple former Trump advisers being shown to have made the claim.

‘Giuliani denies all falsehoods by the angry and misguided Ms Cheney,’ his attorney told CNN. 

During Bannon’s podcast Giuliani called lawmakers on the committee ‘criminals’ and claimed they were simply trying to ‘frame Trump for something he didn’t do.’

Newly-revealed video shows multiple Trump advisers were concerned about the veracity of the former mayor’s election fraud claims and expressed as much to the ex-president – who shrugged them all off. 

Trump dismissed Jared Kushner’s concerns about Rudy Giuliani’s election fraud claims, the January 6 committee revealed in its second of six hearings on Monday. 

The Democrat-led panel opened the hearing with videotaped depositions of Trump’s advisers claiming he declared a premature victory on election night 2020 on the advise of a drunk Giuliani.

The panel played audio of its investigators asking Kushner, for instance, what he said about the former New York City mayor’s claims that Dominion Voting Systems was part of a vast conspiracy to rig its voting machines against Trump.

‘Uh, basically, not the approach I would take if I was you,’ Kushner said he told his father-in-law.

Trump insisted ‘I have confidence in Rudy,’ Kushner claimed.

Advisers’ testimonies indicate that it was apparent within hours on election night that the vote count would take several days. 

Rudy Giuliani appeared on former Trump adviser Steve Bannon’s podcast just as the January 6 committee was holding its second hearing

Rep. Liz Cheney said during her opening statement that Trump ‘rejected the advice of his campaign experts on election night’ in favor of advice from ‘an apparently inebriated Rudy Giuliani’

They were aware it could stretch from ‘very early on,’ according to his daughter and former White House adviser Ivanka Trump. 

Lawmakers are suggesting that Trump’s aides were concerned and dismissive of the election fraud claims being pushed by some of his allies, and that the former president continued pushing them despite warnings from both family and associates.

Cheney said at the outset of the hearing: ‘Pay attention to what Donald Trump and his legal team said repeatedly about Dominion voting machines, far-flung conspiracies with a deceased Venezuelan communist allegedly pulling the strings.’

Former White House attorney Eric Herschmann said on video: ‘What they were proposing, I thought, was nuts.’

‘And then the theory was also completely nuts. It was a combination of Italians and Germans, I mean, different things have been floating around as to who was involved – I remember Hugo Chavez, and the Venezuelans, and she has an affidavit from somebody who says they wrote a software or something in the Philippines. It was just all over the radar,’ Herschmann said.

Barr said he told the president that the election fraud theories he and Giuliani were pushing were ‘crazy stuff’ and that ‘they were wasting their time on and doing a great, great disservice to the country.’

He claimed the former president’s fraud claims came ‘right out of the box on election night’ in the previously unseen video.

Playing a video deposition from the former New York Mayor himself, Giuliani takes a large sip of water before answering that ‘yes’ he was at the White House residence in the early morning hours of November 4.

The committee showed videotaped testimony by Rudy Giuliani himself admitting that he spoke with Trump ‘several times’ on election night, when multiple advisers told lawmakers that the former NYC mayor urged Trump to declare a premature victory 

Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump told the committee that it became ‘increasingly clear’ on election night that the vote count would extend for several days

President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner testified to investigators that he told the then-president he doubted Giuliani’s election fraud theories

Former Attorney General Bill Barr said he told the president that the election fraud theories he and Giuliani were pushing were ‘crazy stuff’

‘It went over beyond midnight, yes,’ Giuliani said. 

The panel also played video from the deposition of former Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien, who dropped out of the hearing at the last minute after his wife went into labor.

Stepien told House investigators that he had heard Giuliani was ‘upstairs’ in a reception area looking to ‘talk to the president.’ 

He recalled huddling with former Trump adviser Jason Miller, Justin Clarke and ex-Chief of Staff Mark Meadows ‘to listen to whatever Rudy presumably wanted to say to the president.’

Miller was asked if he observed anyone in that meeting had too much to drink – to which he named Giuliani as well. 

Asked if he himself recalled the meeting, Giuliani told House investigators: ‘I – I – I mean I spoke to the president. They may have been present. But I spoke to the president several times that night.’

Miller, however, was more direct in laying the blame at the former Trump lawyer’s feet.

‘There were suggestions, by I believe it was Mayor Giuliani, to go and declare victory and say that we’d won it outright,’ the former Trump adviser said on video. 

He said Giuliani made clear that ‘everyone who didn’t agree with that position was being weak.’ 

Stepien said he encouraged Trump to say: ‘It’s too early to tell, too early to call the race. But you know, we are proud of the race we we ran and we think we’re in in good position. And we’ll have more to say about this.’

He said Trump disagreed with that plan.

Trump did hold an unprecedented press conference at the White House on election night where he claimed with absolutely no proof that the vote count was rife with ‘fraud on the American public.’ 

Later on Stepien’s testimony showed that member of Trump’s orbit knew they were facing defeat even as the ex-president continued to claim victory.

‘You know, I, we told him, the group that went over there, outlined, you know, my belief in, in chances for success at this point and then we pegged it at, you know, 5, maybe, maybe, 10 percent based on recounts that were, you know, either were automatically initiated or could be initiated based on, you know, realistic legal challenges, not all the legal challenges that eventually were pursued,’ the former campaign manager claimed.

A video deposition from former Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen shows that even the upper echelons of Trump’s administration made clear to him that Giuliani’s various election challenges throughout the country, such as in Fulton County, Georgia, had no merit.

Rosen, who took office after Barr’s departure at the end of December, told the committee he let Trump know the allegations of fraud in Georgia were ‘just not true.’

‘I told the president myself that – several times in several conversations – that these allegations about ballots being smuggled in – in a suitcase, and run through the machine several times, it was not true,’ Rosen said.

The committee honed in on Giuliani’s role in pushing Trump’s election fraud claims in the second half of its hearing, featuring testimony from former officials in Georgia and Pennsylvania. Both states narrowly went to Biden in 2020 and were lightening rods for the ex-president’s attempts to overturn the vote count. 

‘This morning, we’ll tell the story of how Donald Trump lost an election, and knew he lost an election, and as a result of his loss decided to wage an attack on our democracy,’ Chairman Rep. Bennie Thompson said in his opening statement.

Former ABC News president James Goldston was seen arriving on Capitol Hill Monday morning ahead of the second hearing.

Axios reported last week that lawmakers recruited Goldston – who also helmed Good Morning America and Nightline as executive producer – to shape their mountains of evidence into a ‘blockbuster’ presentation.

The most highly-anticipated testimony was expected to come from former Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien, but he was forced to withdraw less than an hour before the hearing was meant to start after his wife went into labor.

‘Mr. Stepien was in town and preparing for his testimony here today in response to a subpoena when he got a call that his wife had gone into labor. He notified committee council and he immediately headed to hospital to be with her,’ his lawyer told reporters outside of the hearing room.

US Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS), (L) Chair of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the US Capitol, and Vice Chairwoman Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) preside over a House Select Committee hearing to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the US Capitol, in the Cannon House Office Building on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, June 13

House Democratic Rep. Madeleine Dean speaks with DC Metro police officer Michael Fanone (left) and Capitol police officer Harry Dunn (right) ahead of the second January 6 hearing

Fired Fox News editor Chris Stirewalt, who was part of the team that called Arizona for President Joe Biden, prepares to testify

Stirewalt was meant to testify alongside former Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien, who had to leave the hearing for a family emergency after his wife went into labor

The first hearing, held last Thursday at 8 p.m. Eastern Time, featured testimony from Capitol police officer Caroline Edwards and documentary filmmaker Nick Quested.

Edwards’ moving testimony captured the night, as she compared the Capitol to a ‘war zone’ and recalled ‘slipping in people’s blood’ as she defended the building from Trump’s mob of violent supporters – experiencing a traumatic brain injury in the process.

That session was led chiefly by chairman Thompson, a Democrat, and Republican vice chair Cheney. 

It also featured excerpts from videotaped depositions with former Attorney General Bill Barr and Trump’s daughter and White House adviser, Ivanka, both making clear they believed at the time that there was no widespread fraud. 

Multiple members of the select committee suggested they gathered enough evidence to bring criminal charges against Trump over the weekend. Appearing across a slew of Sunday news programs, panel members made clear that they hope Attorney General Merrick Garland is paying close attention to their hearings.

‘I would like to see the Justice Department investigate any credible allegation of criminal activity on the part of Donald Trump or anyone else,’ committee member Rep. Adam Schiff said on ABC News’ This Week.

He later added: ‘They need to be investigated if there’s credible evidence, which I think there is.’ 

Rep. Jamie Raskin, meanwhile, said he doesn’t want to ‘browbeat’ Garland but noted the committee has already laid out criminal statutes they believe Trump violated through a series of court filings.

General view of the room before the second public hearing of the U.S. House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the United States Capitol, at Capitol Hill, in Washington, U.S. June 13

Former ABC News president James Goldston arrives on Capitol Hill ahead of the Monday morning hearing

‘I think that he knows, his staff knows, the US attorneys know, what’s at stake here,’ Raskin told CNN’s State of the Union. 

‘They know the importance of it, but I think they are rightfully paying close attention to precedent in history as well, as the facts of this case.’

Rep. Elaine Luria said the committee’s hearings would focus heavily on Trump’s ‘dereliction of duty,’ particularly during the 187 minute-gap between when the former president’s supporters first broke into the Capitol and when he called them off.

‘We’ve pieced together a very comprehensive tick tock timeline of what he did. And then 187 minutes, you know, this man had the microphone; he could speak to the whole country. His duty was to stand up and say something and try to stop this,’ Luria said on NBC’s Meet the Press.

‘So, we’ll talk about that and what I see to be his dereliction of duty, and he had a duty to act.’ 

During their first hearing the panel contextualized the January 6 attack into a wider alleged plot by Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

The riot was ‘no accident,’ the committee said, but rather ‘Trump’s last stand.’ 

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